Walter Benjamin

Drawing courtesy of Doyle Saylor

Frankfurt School and Institute for Social Research The Institute for Social

Research was affiliatedwith the University ofFrankfurt.

The Institute wascreated in 1923. KurtAlbert Gerlach was itsfirst head.

The goal of the schoolwas theoreticalinnovation andunrestrained socialresearch whichopposed the currenttrend in GermanUniversities.

The most significant members of thisschool of thought were: Theodor Adorno,Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, MaxHorkheimer and later Jurgen Habermas.

All of these men believed in Marx’s theoryof Historical Materialism. They witnessedthe beginning of communism and the riseof fascism. They were reconciling Marxisttheory with the reality of what washappening in the world in the 1920’s and30’s.

Their ideas came to be known as “CriticalTheory.”

Critical Theory

According to Max Horkheimer, criticaltheory seeks to “liberate human beingsfrom the circumstances that enslavethem.” (Horkheimer, 1982)

It tries to explain what’s wrong withsociety and provides a script with howto transform it.

Biography of Benjamin Born July 15, 1892 in Berlin to an upper

middle class couple. Was sickly as a child and spent a lot of time

perusing his father’s book collection While attending a very progressive counter-

cultural boarding school he met an influentialteacher by the name of Gustav Wyneken,who advocated cultural revolution of societythrough its youth. Wyneken’s influence canbe seen in Benjamin’s early essays.

In 1912 Benjamin enrolled at the RoyalWilhelm Friedrich University in Berlin. Therehe was influenced by Kant and attendedlectures with Martin Heidegger.

In 1914, WWI breaks out In 1917 he married Dora Pollack and they had a son a

year later. In 1919 he earned his PhD at the university of Berne,

Switzerland, with his dissertation entitled “The conceptof Criticism in German Romanticism.”

In 1923, the Institute for Social Research, affiliatedwith the University of Frankfurt, was created.Benjamin and Adorno met for the first time.

In 1926 he visited Moscow. In 1928 his academic career was cut short by the

rejection of his doctoral thesis by the University ofFrankfurt.

In 1930 Walter and Dora get divorced.

In 1933 Benjamin left Germany to avoid the Nazis andsettled in Paris. Members of the Institute fledGermany and eventually made their way to New Yorkwhere they set up the Institute at Columbia University.They obtained a Visa for Benjamin but he was notready to leave Europe, claiming he had more work todo there.

In 1939 Benjamin was picked up by the Nazis in Parisfollowing their confiscation of his apartment and mostof his library and manuscripts. He was sent to aninternment camp. His health, which was never great,continued to decline. His friends in the Institute ofSocial Research were able to get him released fromthe camp.

After his release he planned to make his way toFrance through the Franco-Spanish border and fromthere emigrate to the United States.

On September 25th, 1940, Benjamin and twoother traveling refugees arrived in Portbou, atthe Spanish-Franco border, extremelyexhausted after their trip across the Pyrenees.Because Benjamin had no exit visa fromFrance, the guards at the border informed himhis presence on Spanish soil was illegal andthey would need to deport him back to France.This return to Nazi occupied France wouldmean deportation and death for Benjamin.Seeing how ill he was, they agreed to let himstay overnight with plans to deport him thefollowing day. Feeling great despair aboutbeing returned to the Gestapo and his future,accompanied by his total exhaustion from thejourney, Benjamin took an overdose ofmorphine.

Walter Benjamin’s grave in Portbou, Spain

Benjamin’s Major Influences Gustav Wynekin, who was a teacher at the boarding

school in Haubinda , a progressive counter-culturalinstitution, was interested in exploring educational theoriesregarding cultural revolution of society through its youth.

Frankfurt School early members including Adorno,Horkheimer and Marcuse.

Bertolt Brecht, a playwright on whose works Benjaminwrote some of his earliest and most important essays ofcritical theory in regard to theatre.

Immanual Kant’s philosophy. Benjamin is considered aneo-Kantian philosopher.

Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem, eminent professor inJewish mysticism who tried to persuade Benjamin to go toPalestine with him.

Walter Benjamin and Marxism

Benjamin was described as “probably themost peculiar Marxist ever, meaning he isnot viewed as a classical traditional Marxist.He did not write about how revolutionaryclass consciousness would be obtained.

Benjamin’s writing contain elements of Jewishesoteric and messianic thinking that cannotbe assimilated to the Marxist-materialistworld-view.

As a Marxist he is interested in mass cultureand in the way it is packaged and consumedby the masses.

Benjamin, Adorno & the Frankfurt School Benjamin and the Frankfurt School did not always see eye

to eye. The Institute was not crazy about the theological elements

in Benjamin’s thoughts and tried to influence him in amore secular direction. They also did not like his brand ofMarxism. Benjamin was not a classic traditional Marxist.

Since Benjamin was receiving a stipend from the FrankfurtSchool, Adorno encouraged him to change some of hisessays to reflect more of a traditional Marxist view.

Adorno did not like the influence that Brecht had overBenjamin. He felt Brecht was crude and overly optimistic.

Adorno and Benjamin also had a falling out over music.Benjamin had an animosity towards music developed as achild. He once said that music needed words in order tohave political content.

Benjamin’s Writings 1920’s-Literay criticism of

Geothe & translations ofBaudelaire

1921-”Critique of Violence” 1926-1927- Moscow Diary 1927-”Main Features of My First

Impression of Hashish” 1927-Started The Arcades

Project 1928-”One Way Street” 1929-Wrote a series of essays

on Brecht’s plays & poetry

1929-Surrealism: The Last Snapshot ofthe European Intelligentsia

1934 to 1935-”Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction” - Considered his most influentialessay.

1938-Revised Berlin Childhood Around 1900 whichhe had written in 1932.

1939-”Some Motifs in Baudelaire” 1940 - Theses on the Philosophy of History

Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction Works of art had been reproduced in

the past by hand. Mechanical reproduction of art was a

whole new ballgame. Graphic artbecame mechanically reproducible withthe woodcut which was followed bylithography which was then surpassedby photography and then film.

Even the best reproduced art is lackingpresence in time and space.

The unique existence of the work of art issubstituted by a lot of copies. Todaypeople can see hundreds of reproductionsof an artwork without ever having seenthe original.

The original work of art has an “aura”which is created through it’s time andplace in history.

Benjamin defines ‘aura’ “as the uniquephenomenon of distance, however close itmay be.

The function of the earliestworks of art were based inritual and had cult value.

Through mechanicalreproduction art loses itsaura and its basis in ritual. Ithas the potential to becomea political commodity.

With photography,authenticity is not applicable.

With photography and film,exhibition value replaces cultvalue.

There are many differences between an originalperformance in a play than in a film.

The actor in the play interacts with theaudience. The actor’s performance is whole.

In a film the actor interacts with the camera,therefore the audience interacts with thecamera. The performance is captured by film inseparate vignettes.

Benjamin creates an analogy of a surgicaloperation, wherein the surgeon is like thecameraman and a magician is like a painter.The magician in his healing keeps a distancefrom the patient whereas the surgeonpenetrates the patient’s body to heal.

The political aestheticization of film lies in thedirector’s ability to direct our eye and senses to aparticular place and view.

The speed of film distracts our concentration. Nosooner have we seen one image and it is replaced.Distraction is introduced as a mode of reception.

“Distraction as provided by art presents a covertcontrol of the extent to which new tasks havebecome soluble by apperception. Since,moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid suchtasks, art will tackle the most difficult and mostimportant ones where it is able to mobilize themasses.”

The individual no longer contemplates the film butthe reverse occurs.

Through film and its inherent technical propertiesperception has forever changed.

Epilogue

In the epilogue Benjamin speaks more aboutthe aestheticization of politics and its relationto Fascism and war. He ends by saying,“Mankind, which in Homer’s time was anobject of contemplation for the Olympiangods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienationhas reached such a degree that it canexperience its own destruction as anaesthetic pleasure of the first order. This isthe situation of politics which Fascism isrendering aesthetic. Communism respondsby politicizing art.”

Implications of “The Work of Art in theAge of Mechanical Reproductions” Is the loss of the aura of the art (if that really occurs) such a bad

thing if it means that more people have access to the art? Does the power of film to move the masses in a negative way

outweigh the power to move them in a positive way? Who is to say what is a negative or positive direction? Can we truly be aware of when we are being manipulated

through film and other cultural avenues? Who benefits from mass participation of culture? The common

people or the government? How has art in the age of digital reproduction affected

individuals and society? Who owns the information that is available on the Internet.

Who can own something that can be infinitely copied-exactly,with no difference between original and copy? Does thismatter?

What is the meaning of life?